Depends what you definition of small is. It is one of the heaviest woods when green. Nice load there!
Buddy coming this afternoon, once rain moves through , and we will process him a load to take, and try and get cleaned up. But everything is at least cut and manageable now.
Just out of curiousity, what for splitter do you have that handles those larger rounds and crotches with relative ease? I’ve got a pile of red oak rounds leftover from timbering that are 2’-3’ in diameter but I’ve pretty much given up on them as it takes way too long to split them compared to anything in that 1’-2’ diameter range.
I have a TW-6 Timberwolf. Not sure what hydraulic pressure is, but that’s really not the issue. The log lift can pick up 500 pounds but as the splitter doesn’t go vertical, now you have a huge round up there and after splitting it’s still two big pieces to handle. And I have a mini loader with grapple so I usually noodle them a little and then hand split to get the reasonable. No way it’s worth it compared to 12-18inch stuff. That one load was 10 man hours to cut and then quarter. And that’s not yet firewood size for a stove.
Wow, I admire your commitment to do all that with a splitter that’s doesn’t go vertical, not sure I’d even attempt that! I’ve tried splitting some of them with multiple splitters in the 25-30 ton range but it’s very labor intensive, even with a vertical splitter. The sad part is the pile sits right inside the gate to our farm, so I have to see them every time I go over there and it’s heartbreaking watching it go to waste. My only hope is that the ones on top continue to dry out and maybe one winter when we have a cold spell I can take the splitter over and finally get them to split somewhat easily. Thanks for not making me feel bad about going for the easy the stuff though!
I've split up some 30 inch red oak rounds. I could have used a fourth wedge on some and more than once feared I'd be retrieving one out of the ashes. It does take a while. I can be stubborn sometimes.
Main issue is that when I cut myself on loads I find myself, I don’t often go above 16-18inch diameter. But I get wood loads from two different arborists, which sometimes means some big stuff, so it’s kind of part of the deal. So the load pictured is common, but that particular load was a little more stump heavy because another guy that usually comes also had a trailer break down, so I got sort of a doble load. Several my loader could not pick up, but thankfully could roll as I noodled. 9.5 out of 10 people don’t want the wood from the trees they have taken down, which is good for burners I guess but means tree companies have to find a home for it, and chippers can only handle so big
Prior to inhering my H/V MTD, I have used the low horizontal only Didier push plate splitter. It worked well on those big rounds, you just have to roll them up using jack stands or splits. Then you just split them in half. Much easier to deal with then. Now the MTD. While those honey locust rounds that I split with the MTD were not as big as the ash rounds in the Didier, those HL were determined to be 400 lbs or more . I can't remember the figures we determined. At any rate, all that stuff is heavy. A log lift equipped splitter will probably be in my future if I have to deal with big stuff like that again. Recently is been a lot of Goldilocks wood from my buddy's woods. I'm super thankful for that.
